The owner of the iPhone trademark in Brazil, IGB Eletronica SA, said it would consider selling the naming rights to Apple Inc.

"We're open to a dialogue for anything, anytime," said Eugenio Emilio Staub, chairman of IGB, in an interview in Sao Paulo. "We're not radicals."

Brazil's Institute for Industrial Property confirmed this week that IGB has exclusive rights to the 'iphone' mark as it relates to mobile phones. Apple had requested exclusive use of the word in 2006, but the request was not granted because IGB's trademark dated back to 2000.

Apple has sold the iPhone in Brazil for several years, but with this ruling it appears Apple will need to negotiate with IGB for the right to use the 'iPhone' mark. A similar situation occurred in China last year. Proview Technology owned the Chinese trademark to "iPad" and eventually sold the mark to Apple for $60 million.

Mess? They owned this trademark years before iPhone existed. How are they messing with Apple?

Well, it all depends on what they originally trademarked it for. After all, it's been 8 years...

Maybe they had a legitimate purpose, but then when Apple released their own iPhone, maybe they realized they were sitting on a gold mine. All they had to do was call attention to the fact that they owned the trademark, maybe by announcing that (ahem) "Hey, we intend to make a phone called the IPhone! And we have every legal right to! Anybody have a problem with that?" and wait for Apple to come running in with bags of cash.